Conjoint analysis: a new method of eliciting environmental preferences and stakeholder group segmentation

Deciding on an environmental strategy is an important and also difficult task for amanufacturing organisation in Sweden today. Therefore, there is a need for a method toenable organisations to sort and prioritize the environmental objectives and concerns, TheSwedish Steel Producers' Association,"Jernkontoret", has initiated a research programmecalled "Towards a closed steel eco-cycle". The aim is to make the steel eco-cycle sustainablethrough increased scrap recycling and efficiency. In order to assess what environmentalpreferences the different stakeholder groups have, an interdisciplinary research project, usingconjoint analysis, has been perforn1ed where preferences for some of the most importantenvironmental concerns within the steel industry were investigated, Environmentalpreferences within six stakeholder groups - members of public, representatives from the steelindustry, customers to the steel industry, interest groups, decision makers and environmentalexperts - were evaluated through a conjoint analysis combined with a cluster analysis. Thesurvey was distributed through a questionnaire and the respondents were asked to rank 8alternatives in a fractional factorial design,The results indicated that emission of carbon dioxide was prioritized over use of nonrenewable energy, use of non-renewable resources and weight reduction of products. Acluster analysis was made on the respondents and eight segments were found, however, thissegmentation was markedly different than expected in that the original six groups were notrecovered.The results were communicated back to the participants directly after they responded to thequestionnaire and the result was discussed in the group. The reactions from the discussionwere documented in order to be made useful in the product development process as well as inthe decision process within the steel industry.